rococo

The image of the painter in his studio is a popular and common visual theme from the early modern period to the present. This particular cartouche, designed by Jacques de Lajoüe, shows a painter with the tools of his trade arranged in the form of a cartouche (a type of an ornamental frame). With the...

Posted By

Cabelle Ahn

Date

February 20, 2015

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How wild can you go with design! These dazzling images of ewer-shaped ornaments by the German rococo designer Franz Xaver Habermann prove that German rococo can be pretty flamboyant. This sheet comes from an album of ornament prints of designs for mirrors, candelabra, wall sconces, console tables and other furniture. While Habermann was trained as...

Posted By

Gail Davidson

Date

January 16, 2015

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This study by the prolific French artist, François Boucher, offers a rich insight into the practice of collecting drawings in eighteenth-century France. The head of the turbaned man is sketched with black and red chalk, with the white of the paper used as a third shade. The sheet features the annotation, “Boucher” in the lower right...

Posted By

Cabelle Ahn

Date

December 25, 2014

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This is a design for a panel for a folding screen by the prolific French painter, designer and academician François Boucher. Titled, “The Triumph of Priapus,” it was etched and engraved as part of a suite of folding screen designs. This publication, which was titled Nouveaux Morceaux pour des paravents, included four other designs titled,...

Posted By

Cabelle Ahn

Date

October 6, 2014

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Ships, precariously tethered to mountain tops by garlands, hover over a landscape of pure fantasy in this graphite drawing by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Pillement (1728-1808). Pillement was known for his imaginative prints featuring chinoiserie designs that were in essence European variants of Japanese and Chinese motifs. Pillement was a prolific artist who operated in...

Posted By

Cabelle Ahn

Date

September 28, 2014

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This drawing is a design for a spandrel, the roughly triangular space between the left or right exterior curve of an arch, by the French academician and painter François Boucher. The drawing is executed with black chalk, pen, brown ink and wash and represents the personification of truth and fame honoring Louis XV. In the...

Posted By

Cabelle Ahn

Date

September 12, 2014

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Eighteenth-century meal services were elaborate affairs, as exemplified in this print showing tureens and a table center piece designed by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier for Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull in the 1730s. Meissonnier worked for Louis XV, becoming orfèvre du roi (goldsmith to the king) in 1724. This engraving is plate 115 in folio 72 of...

Posted By

Cabelle Ahn

Date

September 8, 2014

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This is a design for a cartouche by the French académician, ornemaniste, and painter Jacques de Lajoüe (1687- 1761). It was etched by Gabriel Huquier as plate 4 in his Second book of Cartouches (Deuxième livre de Cartouches), which was published in 1734 (as established by Roland Michel). The ascribed date locates this at a...

Posted By

Cabelle Ahn

Date

August 29, 2014

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The Hôtel de Soubise is a familiar sight for many researchers of French history. Located at 60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois in the 3rd Arrondissement, the building is now used as one of the main branches of the French National Archives. This drawing after the French architect Germain Boffrand (1667- 1754) shows an elevation of the...